This weekend we celebrate Father’s Day and so I certainly want to take the opportunity to wish all of our fathers a Happy & Blessed Father’s Day! Thank you too for the continued prayers for my father, at this point he continues to do well and so we are grateful for that.

   Here in church, we enter once again into the liturgical season of Ordinary Time in a time that has been pretty much anything but ordinary. These past months have certainly changed us, our Church, and our world in so many ways. Right now we are living through a time that is pretty much no way an ordinary time.

   If we look up the word “ordinary” in the dictionary, we might find listed with it or next to it synonyms such as routine, or common, or mundane. But, while those synonyms might describe other ordinary events, none of them capture what we mean in the Church by calling this time of year, “Ordinary Time.” What we mean here is that this time is ordered for, ordained to, the everyday living of the Christian life.

   But though we call this time “ordinary time” we’re reminded that the everyday living of that Christian life will be anything but easy, anything but ordinary. An authentically lived Christian life is one that is filled with challenge, filled with resistance. Not that we’ll have to go out there and seek it out, but if we’re fully living the gospel, if we’re truly embracing the gospel that Jesus calls us to follow, then things like resistance and challenge will naturally find their way into our lives.

   Not everyone will want to hear about a respect for human life in all of its stages. Not everyone will want to be reminded about the need to see God-given dignity in every human being. The gospel values are quite often directly in competition with the values of the world and when we choose Christ’s way over the world’s way, when we choose to speak up rather than keep silent, challenge will find us. And when it does, Jesus reminds us, we should be most afraid of that which can harm our souls, that which can damage our relationship with Him. That may mean speaking an uncomfortable truth or speaking up when it’d be easier to keep silent. We may be entering again into Ordinary Time, but our lives as Christians must be anything but. Have a blessed week!